The gist is this: Cleevely bought a MacBook Pro with a screen problem.

Annoying lines would appear on the screen and not go away.

He looked up the problem online and found that other owners were having the same issue. It's called ghosting.

One of the reasons Cleevely bought this particular MacBook Pro was that it's supposed to have a "retina" screen, so obviously the screen's performance was important to him.

So Cleevely took his computer into the Apple Store to see one of Apple's customer support people, a so-called Genius.

The Genius he saw was not very helpful. He performed a super-quick test on Cleevely's screen and found that it passed.

He refused to help any further.

Cleevely went home and came up with a similar, but slightly modified test that showed the MacBook Pro does indeed have a screen problem.

But Apple's bad test for his screen isn't really the problem he now has with the company. He says:

My problem isn’t Apple’s test.

My experience as a whole was extremely negative, and I don’t remember it being like that [before]. I remember an Apple that bent over backwards to understand its customers’ point of view and stretched itself to meet the high expectations it sets.

Having written to them about my test (a past version of this blog post), they got in contact to repeat their stance: The test was passed, it didn’t matter what I stated the issue was, or what I could demonstrate. Line in the sand. No leeway.

My view of Apple has changed. As a loyal customer of apple for almost 11 years (iMac G4) my loyalty has been shaken.

Even the Apple store, a relatively new invention of my time with Apple, has changed. I’ve been in with the most absurd of problems, and been treated [with] nothing but patience, flexibility and generosity from Apple [in the past]. This seems to have been superseded by a “Computer says no” style, where I get told that I have to call Apple myself to take things further.

Is Apple still a great company that works to provide amazing products and user experience to its customers?